Plastic pollution is making corals sick

We know plastic trash in the oceans kills birds, turtles, and whales, but now, scientists have found it’s making corals sick, too. In reefs in Asia and Australia, corals tangled in plastic are about 90 percent more likely to get a disease, according to new research. And that can cause corals, which are already stressed by warming ocean waters, to die.
Between 2011 and 2014, researchers looked at more than 124,000 corals in 159 reefs across the Asia-Pacific region, which hosts over 55 perc